notes on: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
MEDIUM: Music GENRE: Rap TRACKS: 18 RUNTIME: 73 minutes
FAVORITE TRACKS: N95, Father Time, Rich Spirit, Count Me Out, Crown, Mother I Sober, Mirror
LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Worldwide Steppers, Rich (interlude), Auntie Diaries
FEATURES: Blxst, Amanda Reifer, Sampha, Taylour Paige, Kadhja Bonet, Summer Walker, Ghostface Killah, Kodak Black, Baby Keem, Sam Dew, Tanna Leone, Beth Gibbons
Release Year: 2022
“Tell them the truth.”
Kendrick Lamar has returned from his five-year hiatus with Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, a double LP release that picked up exactly where his Pulitzer Prize winning album, DAMN, had left off. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers seems to hit on the same motifs as his previous albums, spirits and heritage and demons and genetic memory and a cursed people, but it comes to a drastically different conclusion than his prior offerings. DAMN concluded with Kendrick Lamar recognizing and accepting his role in America as a modern day prophet. Kendrick Lamar realized that in order to be the best prophet for his people, he needed to look at his past and exorcize the demons placed on his lineage by both himself and his ancestors in order to save his future. This was the penultimate destination of his journey towards God and his true self started way back in 2013 on Good Kid, Maad City and further realized through To Pimp A Butterfly.
However, we know it did not exactly turn out that way. Kendrick Lamar receded into his bubble, away both creatively and from the public eye. While his music remained a rallying point in the fight against police brutality and for improved race relations, Kendrick Lamar didn’t say or do much of anything as the world turned to shit around him. In his time away, Kendrick Lamar looked into the mirror and realized that he was in no position to be the prophet he ordained himself to be. He was dealing with his own vices, curses, and demons that needed to be addressed. He was no longer himself, he was “oklama.”
Oklama originates from the Chahta Anumpa tribe. “Okla” means people and “ma” means my. The phrase “oklah ma” is often used in the Choctaw translation of the Bible when a prophet is addressing a community on God’s behalf. If Kendrick Lamar is oklama then he is his people. But who are his people? Black people? Compton? Humanity? I think the answer lies on the cover of the album. Shot by Renell Medrano, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’s album cover has Kendrick Lamar on the cover with his fiance and two children. Kendrick Lamar wears a thorny crown, invoking the image of Jesus Christ (the savior). He also has a pistol in his waistband. He looks out the door into the world, ready to protect what he has, his people. Kendrick Lamar had two young children since the release of DAMN and he has realized that he is now more than just himself and what he carries with him will be inherited by his children. It is up to him to break the generational curse and make a new clean world for his wife and kids, even if it is at the expense of his prophethood.
The double album tells that story. The first album, Mr. Morale, covers tracks 1-9. It begins with “United In Grief,” where Kendrick Lamar chronicles the mental and spiritual hole he fell into following his last album. The first words are “I hope you find some peace of mind, in this lifetime” and the voice of his woman, Whitney, urges him to “tell them the truth.” Kendrick expresses his grief and how he felt trapped. He’s been going through it himself, too much to save the world. He follows that up with the quick paced “N95” where he spits quick lines, telling us to shed the fake and the superfluous vices of the flesh and see what we still have left to offer. We need to shed the fugazi for purification and practice authenticity and honesty no matter how ugly it makes us look. He follows this with “Worldwide Steppers” where he raps about fucking white women (lol) and possible anxiety that he is not living up to his ancestor’s dreams of him and that his actions are hurting his people.
The album finally pivots towards full repentance on the fourth track, “Die Hard.” He recognizes his demons and hopes that it isn't too late to atone for his sins and save his bloodline. Kendrick says, “I have some regrets but my past won’t keep me from my best.” After this he looks at his past on the fifth track, “Father Time.” He raps about his daddy issues, specifically a basketball game he played against his father when he was an adolescent. His father was rough with him and let him know the world would be rough as well. His father was a hard man who didn’t think he had the luxury of emotion. Kendrick Lamar thinks he inherited this from his father along with a plethora of other hyper masculine traits. But at the end, Kendrick Lamar still loves his father and was grateful for having him in his life, something a lot of young black men did not experience. He follows this with some Kodak Black spoken word poetry and the 7th track, “Rich Spirit.”
“Rich Spirit” brings Kendrick Lamar back to the present and back into braggadocio rather than the reflective nature of the previous tracks. He further explores the idea that being rich in spirit is more rewarding and real than having material wealth. Lasting memory and eternal salvation are all we have. The song reads as a warning of sorts, as if he’s striving towards the Buddha or Christ figure, but opposition keeps pulling him back towards the flesh. The next track, “We Cry Together” is an argument song where Kendrick Lamar uses two personas, one voiced by him and the other by Zola actor, Taylour Paige. He uses these two characters to reveal a world at war and in the end, he comes to the conclusion that we should shut the fuck up and let love talk. On the final song of the first album, “Purple Hearts,” Kendrick Lamar along with Ghostface Killah and Summer Walker lets us know that love conquers all and that we should lead our lives with love in mind. Kendrick Lamar seems to surmise that this love shouldn’t come from just anywhere, but should be born from God’s love of his people.
The second album, The Big Steppers, leads us with God’s love lighting the path towards salvation. The road is dark but he has a starting point now. It begins with “Count Me Out.” Kendrick Lamar forgives himself for his demons and he realizes that nothing can complete him but him. He finishes his internal struggle and gathers that he can’t be anyone but himself. Kendrick Lamar says “this is me and I’m blessed.” Kendrick is his people but is not our savior and he can’t please everybody, let alone himself. This radical path of self-recognition is first explored on “Crown.” Kendrick once again invokes the image of the Messiah’s thorny crown but this time, as an idea he cannot live up to.
Baby Keem channels this idea on “Savior-Interlude” and Kendrick Lamar reiterates this again on “Savior.” He lets us know that he cannot save us despite what he has done for us. And neither can J.Cole, Future, or LeBron James. Kendrick Lamar draws attention to celebrity culture as well as his own impostor syndrome. He questions the labels that have been placed on him due to the conscious nature of his music. He maligns the expectations of the celebrity-activist. He argues those expectations were never his intentions. Kendrick Lamar aligns his personality closer to being like Kodak Black than being woke or pro-black. He tells us “Tupac’s dead, gotta think for yourself.” He protects himself in his valley of silence. He declines to speak on the world.
The next track, “Auntie Diaries,” tells the story of two transgender family members of Kendrick Lamar who were ostracized by his community. He (somewhat clumsily) preaches love and acceptance of the LGBT community. He expresses his desire to unlearn hate. He chooses humanity over religion. On the seventh track of the second album, Kendrick Lamar speaks directly to his children. He wonders how his actions would affect them and how past life transgressions have affected him. He uses R.Kelly’s molestation victim to rapist story as an example of how negative actions can completely change the direction of someone’s life. Kendrick Lamar argues that actions in the now are a direct result of the vices and traumas of our ancestors.
We are either building atop of one another or burying our bloodline even further. Kendrick pledges to step out of the hole. Kendrick Lamar watched his cousin struggle with addiction then helped her son, Baby Keem, make a million dollars. Kendrick has raised his family out of poverty but he still needs to finish healing himself in order to heal his people. He sacrifices himself to start the healing. The next track is “Mother I Sober.” This is where Kendrick loses all of the walls he put up to protect himself. He reveals that an older family member was once suspected of molesting him, and although Kendrick wasn’t touched, no one believed him. His mother tells him years later that she was touched and that was why she projected that trauma onto him. He forgives his mother for abusing him. He forgives himself for cheating on his woman. He grabs his chance at transformation. Kendrick Lamar frees himself from his guilt and expels the demons from his people, healing everyone. He breaks the generational curse that haunted his family for the past few hundred years and healed the trauma within himself. Kendrick Lamar has built a clean and unfettered foundation for his children to build upon.
“You broke a generational curse.”
The final track, “Mirror,” is about self-preservation. In the face of the world and with the burden of his family placed upon his shoulders, Kendrick Lamar chose himself. Being oklama, himself includes his family and his responsibilities. He rejected the pressure. In response to the first track when Whitney implored him to “tell them the truth,” he replies “I choose me, I’m sorry.” Kendrick Lamar turns his back on prophethood, societal expectations, celebrity life, TDE, and the world. He couldn’t handle the pressure and excused himself from the spotlight for family and generational wellbeing. He says he has more to live for now and he shouldn’t be responsible for the world’s misplaced faith in him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save the world my friend, I was too busy building mine again.”
I didn’t come into Kendrick Lamar’s seventh LP with any particular expectations about the thematic content and I think that served my listening experience well. Following Kendrick’s release of “The Heart Pt. V” a few days before the release of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, I had a friend text me and say that she didn’t care what Kendrick Lamar had to say next unless it addressed the evils of capitalism. She surmised that was the next logical step in his conscious evolution and that it was his responsibility as a “woke” rapper. It struck me as odd that he is viewed this way. His music was never educational in my estimation. He didn’t rap about police brutality statistics or redlining or gerrymandering or try to explain how congress turned a bill into law like some south central LA schoolhouse rock. He spoke his truth and his pain and tied it to a history, a history of a people that have been disenfranchised and left behind. His albums have acted as spiritual journeys to inspire change more than anything else, and in that respect, Kendrick’s latest album is a conceptual success.
I don’t have too much to say about the intentionality behind Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. I think some of the woke elements worked but much of it didn’t. Kodak Black being a muse and feature for the album despite his numerous rape allegations was disheartening. The messaging behind songs like “Worldwide Steppers” and “Auntie Diaries” were elementary and didn’t offer any perspective that absolutely needed to be heard, despite the positive intentions. The use of homophobic slurs was odd as well, even if the context wasn’t pushing towards a negative point against the LGBT community. To be completely honest, I think I would have preferred a completely personal album rather than the more ambitious and encompassing projects from the past. Even if Kendrick had a responsibility to be woke, now that he was branded a woke rapper, I think he conquered the racial mountain that Langston Hughes wrote about long ago. Artists and creatives should have the independence to move in any direction they desire.
Even saying that, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is Kendrick’s most personal project yet. There are hardly any songs where he takes the camera off of himself. It sounds off like we are overhearing a therapy session between himself and Whitney as he lays himself bare and commits the ultimate sacrifice, honesty. Despite how freeing the expression must be, it has to suck to have to be honest about such complex emotional topics as Kendrick Lamar is doing across this album. As he muttered to himself on “Mother I Sober,” I felt a heaviness and a chill in my heart. The pain from his experience magnified by the melancholic chords of the piano pushed me into Kendrick and I became him, in a way that I have become very artists before.
As of writing, I have listened to the album 8 times over (obviously I’ve replayed my favorites a few times by themselves). The highlight of my listening experience was probably the first time I heard “Father Time.” Kendrick Lamar rapped about a basketball game and made it sound like war and love and longing and murder. There was a grit, tenacity, and tenderness to the way he said his words on the song and helped deliver his message just the right way. The track samples a reversed loop of “You’re not there” by Hoskins ‘N Crowd and it hits my ear like tears throughout the song. Sampha’s softness on the chorus is a strong antithesis to Kendrick’s rigid voice.
I really love how “Rich Spirit” makes me feel. The lyrics feel fun and soft. I can see myself walking through the park on a sunny day just bobbing my head and having a good time. I love music that has the power to take me somewhere else. His flow and cadence has the bounce of classic Cali rap but the voice is smooth. I feel like he channeled Snoop Dogg in some way for the song. Shoutout to music that makes you feel cool.
I feel like The Big Steppers was more successful than Mr. Morale in executing Kendrick’s concept. A big part of that was “Count Me Out” and “Crown.” My mind has somehow conflated both tracks into a single song. I relate to being unsatisfied despite myself and my successes. Because Kendrick found his way out his hole, it gives me a bit of hope for myself. I feel like I have a lot I need to forgive myself for. The questions he asked himself on these tracks seemed to be addressed directly to me. Questions that probably still need to be answered.
In Oscar Wilde’s Critic As Artist, Wilde theorized that an artist must concede a piece of reality to ascend the art. He said that we are allured to art by mystery and that it becomes complete in its beauty through incompleteness. Music is special in a way that it never reveals its secret. Every performance is different and every emotional feeling is different. We’ve never felt the same thing twice. Wilde suggests that the worst thing we can do for art is to realize its ideal too absolutely. And I think Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is an absolute success in that department. Kendrick Lamar sits at the axis of the whole project, seeking to scrub away his public perception. He wants us to know that we never knew him. And in a way, he keeps that mystery alive, both about himself and about his music… in defiance of his honesty.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is an honest album that tells us that we know nothing and that he’s going to leave us on our own to figure it out. I feel abandoned by Kendrick Lamar by the end of this album. I never saw him as my savior but “Mirror” felt like a swan song, not only to TDE but to music as a whole. This is probably not it, I’m certain that I’m overreacting. But Kendrick’s latest offering was a blast to listen to. And if this is it, I’m satisfied. The album is beautiful even if Kendrick failed at saving the world. Kendrick Lamar has a real connection with millions of fans like me. Our connection was built out of music,
And so not built at all,
And therefore built for ever.
4.5 APPLES OF 5 APPLES
published May 16, 2022
